


I'll Take Anything (Something to Hold On To)

by dilapidatedcorvid



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Self-Pity, Vomiting, screaming at gods, spoilers: episode 69, the rest of the m9 but like super briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 14:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19889668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilapidatedcorvid/pseuds/dilapidatedcorvid
Summary: Maybe if she closes her eyes, the next time she wakes up, this will all prove to be a dream. Maybe the next time she wakes up, Yasha will bebackback, and not-or,the four times Beau's ribs hurt and it sucks, and the one time it doesn't suck so much.





	I'll Take Anything (Something to Hold On To)

It's strange. One moment she's in front of Yasha, the next she's not, flying across the battlefield as she's thrown by massive hands that she knows so tender presses flowers into her little book. She crashes onto the ground and skids, rolling to a stop a few feet away from her initial impact, groaning.

Fuck, her ribs hurt.

Beau turns over onto her back to catch the breath that was so viciously beat out of her, barely rolling out of the way as Skingouger's point slams into the ground right where she was a moment ago. She follows the thick blade up to find Yasha, eyes tinted red, an angry, bloody red, and she barely catches the blade between her hands right over her sternum the second time it comes down on her.

"Come on, Yasha…" she struggles, sweat beading down her forehead as the blade begins to win in the battle of friction, "snap out of it…" She pushes the blade to the side just enough that it slices clean three inches into her upper arm instead and she screams in agony, alive, but in so much pain.

She watches Yasha ready her blade again as she clutches her arm, in no position to move, much less get herself up off the ground. "Yasha, please! It's me, Beau-"

Blinding pain. Fuck, it's the worst thing she's experienced ever and one time her father flayed her ass open with a cane until she couldn't sit right for half a week. But oh gods, this is even worse.

Beau gapes down at the metal buried through her chest, then at the hole as Yasha drags the blade down, down, down until it catches on her hips. The blood, the viscera spilling everywhere, the entrails, the massive amount of blood… you're not supposed to see your own intestines, right? That's not a good sign? And then suddenly, there's no pain anymore. Beau's eyes find Yasha's as her head tips back and the last thing she remembers seeing is unflinching cruelty in ruby.

Maybe if she closes her eyes, the next time she wakes up, this will all prove to be a dream. Maybe the next time she wakes up, Yasha will be _back_ back, and not-

\--

Beau wakes up.

And promptly rolls over to the side and vomits off a bed she didn't even realise she had been on, her body screaming in pain at the movement so she chokes and sputters as her bile comes up red.

Jester's instantly at her side pumping her full of healing spells and oh gods, thanks Jester, that helps but…

Fuck, her ribs hurt. Her jaw hurts. Her body hurts. But not as much as her heart hurts.

Beau finishes spitting out the iron acid in her mouth and groans, flopping back onto her back despite her body's protests. "Y-Yasha?" Fuck, her voice sounds like she's been out for a few days.

Jester shakes her head wearily and that's all Beau needs to know. She closes her eyes and shuts out the noise. There's conversation but Beau wants no part in it. Everything hurts and she just needs a couple years to recover from… well, _that_.

She can vaguely smell food coming from downstairs and her throat is drier than Kamordah summers, but she's so tired… so tired… she'll just-

\--

She remembers things from when she was dead. Which is funny, because dead people aren't supposed to, you know, experience things anymore. But she remembers seeing flashes of things. A man in black with wings. At first, maybe she thought it would have been one of Yasha's kind, but then nothing else. Then purple with ostentatious robes and Beau thinks about how she might have to tell Molly about Yasha and that's… that's a hard no from her, someone else will have to die and do it instead. And then a figure she doesn't recognise but she feels like she should… the soft smile gives it away. It's the same soft smile Yasha gives her sometimes when she doesn't think Beau's looking, and Beau realises for the first time that she's looking at Yasha's wife, and maybe she wants to cry? She doesn't know.

Fuck, her ribs hurt. Not really her ribs though, but an organ within her ribs. Definitely not her heart. Beau doesn't have a heart. Having a heart means she's capable of loving and being loved, and Beauregard is many things, but certainly neither of those.

Just as she's about to reach out and ask Zuala about her wife, there's a tugging sensation between her shoulder blades and all she remembers is light as she's ripped through the afterlife again and back into her body.

\--

It storms on the third night after she's run through with a blade as thick as her torso is wide, and the fourth night, and the fifth. It's only on the last night that Beau is physically able to drag herself out of bed and far enough to press her forehead against the freezing cold glass and step out through the doors into the night air, torrential rain blurring the landscape beyond. Her hair soaks instantly, her clothes following soon after.

She turns her face up into the rain, pulling her goggles over her eyes so she can squint at the stormy clouds above, searching for a sign, a flash of lightning, a shape in the clouds, whatever.

Nothing. Just rain, clouds near black, and the bitter cold.

"Where are you?" She screams, "Where are you and why aren't you helping us?"

The only sound she's met with is that of rain hitting the streets below her in a slumbering Bazzoxan.

"If you are a god, then come down and prove it! Show me that you can do more than just summon a measly thunderstorm!" She can't tell if those are tears on her face or the rain anymore, it's all just so much.

"Come on, you coward, come down and show me that you're worth following!"

She's definitely crying now, heaving sobs that pain her every breath. Oh gods, the air is so cold in her lungs.

"Please, please, you saved Yasha once before, please, save her again, I'm begging you."

She's met with silence. Not that Beau expected anything else. Miracles are to her as tarot readings are. None of them have ever come true for her, so why should she believe in them?

Beau wipes at her nose with a rain-slicked hand and stifles a sob.

Fuck, her ribs hurt.

\--

It's weeks before they see her again, her as in Yasha. Not Orphanmaker. Not the blood-crazed barbarian. Yasha. The soft woman with an affinity for flowers that match mismatched eyes.

Beau's not sure how it happened, just that when she wakes up, Yasha's there, solid and sturdy as she remembered her to be, eyes filled with regret, compassion, and just the smallest bit of a smile.

"Hello, Beauregard. I've missed you."

Beau leaps to her feet and flies at Yasha, hands outstretched as she wraps them around Yasha's neck and breathes her in, breathes in leather and flowers and campfire. She feels Yasha's hands come around her own waist and squeeze hard, firm and friendly once more.

And squeezes. And squeezes. All tender and loving, but gods Beau's almost forgotten how strong Yasha is. She's crying but she's also definitely not, badass monks don't cry, and definitely not in front of other people.

Fuck, her ribs hurt.

"I've missed you too."

**Author's Note:**

> Matthew Mercer don't you hurt my barbarian wife.
> 
> Song title: Something to Hold On To by The Band CAMINO
> 
> Tumblr: frumpkinspocketdimension  
> Discord: SweetBabyRae#0967


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